Park Manager Steve Ward was talking about a stretch of ridge that doesn't have a trail on it yet when he said it would offer "one of the best views in Middle Tennessee." That's the part of the Radnor Lake story most Green Hills residents haven't heard yet, because the version that made the rounds this spring was the storm.
You probably know that part already. An ice storm swept through Middle Tennessee this past January, closed the park for weeks, and turned a familiar Saturday walk into a waiting game. What's less known, even among people who hike there every week, is that the same recovery effort that reopened the park early is running alongside a separate, much bigger project: a new stretch of park land near Brentwood that will eventually give Radnor Lake its first real trail expansion in years.
What the Storm Actually Did
By early February, park officials reported that no part of Radnor Lake had been left unscathed. Seven miles of trail were blocked by downed trees and debris across the park's roughly 1,300 acres, and staff spent weeks just getting roads open and power restored to spots like the Barbara J. Mapp Aviary Education Center before trail work could even start.
The park's original timeline for reopening ran well into spring. That's a reasonable estimate for the volume of debris involved. It's also the number that ended up being wrong.
The Volunteer Math That Beat the Timeline
Friends of Radnor Lake put out a call for 240 volunteers to help with cleanup, with the first workdays starting February 21. More than 300 people showed up, working alongside park staff over nine days to clear the East Parking Lot, rehabilitate the South Lake Trail, and reopen access points across the park.
The park reopened on March 2, nearly 60 days ahead of its original projection.
That gap between the ask and the turnout is worth sitting with for a second. State agencies don't usually beat their own timelines by two months, and when they do, it's rarely because the plan changed. It's because more people than expected decided the lake was worth a Saturday. That's the same kind of civic muscle that shows up later in this story, just pointed at something new instead of something broken.
The 9 Acres Nobody's Hiking Yet
While the storm recovery was happening, a separate and much quieter project was moving forward: Radnor Lake had just acquired 9 additional acres near the intersection of Franklin Road and Old Hickory Boulevard in Brentwood. The deal took roughly 20 years of planning and about $8 million in partnerships to put together.
The plan is to connect that new parcel to the existing park through a new trail, one that Ward has described as a 2.5 to 3.5-mile one-way trek running from a new trailhead over the ridge to Radnor Lake itself. A 1-acre parking lot is planned to handle the additional visitors the trail is expected to bring.
"It's going to be awesome. It's going to be one of the best views in Middle Tennessee, or the metropolitan area at least." — Park Manager Steve Ward, on the still-unbuilt Harris Ridge Trail
Put that mileage next to what the park already has. Radnor Lake's established trail system runs just under eight miles total. A one-way trail of 2.5 to 3.5 miles, hiked out and back, adds somewhere between 5 and 7 miles of new hiking distance to a park that hasn't grown its footprint in decades. That's not a boardwalk extension. That's close to doubling the round-trip mileage available to the same people who just spent nine days hauling downed limbs off the existing trails.
Officials are hoping to open the property sometime in 2026, though the trail itself will come after additional cleanup and construction work on the new parcel. There's no confirmed opening date yet, which means the honest answer for anyone asking is: not yet, but sooner than most of the park's history would suggest.
The Rules Haven't Changed
Whatever changes at Radnor Lake in the next year, the day-to-day rules for the park as it stands now are worth keeping straight, especially for the dog owners in the neighborhood who occasionally forget which trail they're allowed on:
- Leashed dogs are permitted only on Otter Creek Road, Hall Drive, and the dam. The rest of the trail system, including the full Lake Trail loop, is off limits to pets.
- Jogging and bikes are restricted to the same three areas. Everywhere else is walking pace only.
- The park is open daily from 6 a.m. until 20 minutes after sunset.
- The Walter Criley Visitor Center runs Tuesday through Saturday, 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., closed for lunch from 1 to 2 p.m.
- The Barbara J. Mapp Aviary Education Center holds hours on Wednesdays and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
None of that is new information for anyone who's hiked there for a season or two. It's worth restating now because a new trail means a new parking lot and, eventually, new signage, and it's easy to assume rules shift when a park physically grows. So far, they haven't.
Closer to Home, the Same Model Is Already Running
Radnor Lake isn't the only green space in the neighborhood that depends on volunteers showing up when it counts. Green Hills Park, the smaller neighborhood park most residents pass on a normal week, is maintained entirely by Friends of Green Hills Park, an all-volunteer nonprofit with no paid staff running the show.
Their marquee event, the Green Hills Park Festival, is set to mark its 10th year on September 12. It's free, pet-friendly, and includes a Pups & Pints pop-up with an off-leash area for dogs, along with local vendors and an outdoor movie to close out the night. It's a smaller stage than Radnor Lake, but it runs on the identical logic: a neighborhood decides its green space is worth showing up for, and a nonprofit organizes the showing up.
That pattern is easy to miss when you're only looking at one park at a time. Seen together, it says something about how green space actually gets maintained and expanded in this part of Nashville. It's not primarily a line item in a municipal budget. It's volunteer hours, donor partnerships built over two decades, and enough people caring enough to spend a Saturday clearing a trail or shopping a festival booth that funds the next mower or bench. Radnor Lake's early reopening and its new acreage near Brentwood didn't happen because a budget got bigger. They happened because the same volunteer energy that's kept Green Hills Park running for a decade scaled up to a 1,300-acre state park when the moment called for it.
What to Watch For
If you're hoping to walk the new Harris Ridge Trail this year, the honest timeline is still soft. Officials have said "sometime in 2026" for the property to open, with the trail construction itself coming after that. Friends of Radnor Lake posts updates as cleanup and construction milestones happen, and that's the most reliable place to check before assuming the new stretch is ready.
In the meantime, the park you already know is fully open, its rules are unchanged, and the same organization that got it back on its feet two months early is now turning its attention toward the ridge above Franklin Road and Old Hickory Boulevard. Whether that turns into your new favorite hike by next spring or takes a little longer, it's a rare thing for a park this established to grow instead of just holding steady. Worth keeping an eye on.
If you're weighing what it's actually like to live near all of this, not just visit it, Bobbi Jo Barnes knows Green Hills block by block, trailhead by trailhead. Let's find your way HOM, contact Bobbi Jo for hands-on help today.
